When the chained, and badly beaten, deposed governor had done so, the adjudicator began reading off his personally prepared script. “You freely admit to committing crimes of mass murder, including parricide, uxoricide, filicide and effective fratricide; this last with respect to your underlings within the Mithrant Brotherhood, who were attempting to take you into lawful custody.

“You also admit to secreting about yourself, undeclared, a number of Utopian eyeorbs, what they sometimes refer to as prison pods. Compounding your crimes in this regard, you used one of them to capture and hold onto the Master Deva intending to invest you into the sixth rung of our brotherhood’s seven steps to exaltation, that of the Heliodromus.”

He paused to allow the crowd’s murmurings of mostly outrage die down. “Your name shall assuredly survive within the annals of infamy for you are guilty on all counts …”

Old Buggery, I think to myself, it’s the Sun Run. (Thus the unintended pun.)

I detour, find another bridge and make my way to the Convention Centre where Van Expo’s being held. All the way I’m muttering to myself: “Darn Heliodromi”. Added to my (minor) annoyance, I arrive late for re-opening of show; hence no doubt missing dozens of sales.

I’m still mumbling about Darn Heliodromi when this fellow stops at my table. “Nice costume,” I say to him. He’s wearing shorts, a number vest, a sweaty tee-shirt, sneakers, a sunhat and a Green Lantern dressing gown.

(There were plenty of fine costumes on display throughout weekend. Funnily enough, when men and women are wearing masks, or heavy makeup, they don’t seem to care what else is on display. Ask me body painters must be made of sterner stuff than those who have their bodies painted then strut about the convention floor inviting boggle-eyes and flashing cameras.)

“This isn’t a costume,” he says to me. “I’ve just come from the Sun Run.”

Darn Heliodromus didn’t buy anything either.

(Heliodromus means Sun-Runner. Its plural I’m assuming would be Heliodromi. In Phantacea I take it to mean a messenger to or from the gods a la Hermes, Thoth or Mercury. Devilish Heliodromi are referred to as Sky Magicians. However, in Roman Mithraism, a Sun Runner is the sixth rung up the ladder to enlightenment.

(Interestingly, to me anyhow, the seventh and top rung is PaterPatrum or simply the Father. When Christianity supplanted Mithraism amongst the Roman soldiery in the 4th Century AD, its headman gained that very title; hence the Pope.

(Along more than a few devilish Heliodromi have appeared during the course of chronicling the Phantacea Mythos, the Sky Magician who appears most often, at least in the printed books, is the very Master Deva referred to in the quote above: Djinn Domitian, the lion-headed Heliodromus of Mithras, aka the Masochist, of whom more is here.)

Here’s an exchange taken from “Helios on the Moon“, a full-length mosaic novel Phantacea Publications will probably release in early 2014. (Most of the covers for the Phantacea Comic Books can be found here.)

Helios on the Moon – comic book cover; art by Richard Sandoval 1978

It’s between the Dual Entities, re whom many more links can be found starting here.

“Her!” Memory indicated Nidaba Starrus, lying immobile on a table. “And them.” She motioned to her five fellow cosmicompani­ons. “They’ve something to do with us, her in particular.”

“What do you mean something? Access your data banks. You’re supposed to know everything that has happened to us in all of our previous lifetimes. Hell’s Teeth, lady, you won’t even let me wake up after another death before draining memories of my last life into your storage system.”

“Maybe I’m malfunctioning …”

Evidently Helios’s Machine-Memory isn’t the only one.

JIm McPherson writes:

So here I am at Van Expo (Vancouver Fan Expo 2013) at the Vancouver Convention Centre (the joint with the pseudo-sails on the waterfront downtown). I’m in front of the Phantacea booth straightening out the mess when a likely looking fellow comes by.

I buttonhole him, start yapping about Phantacea Publications and give him my card. He retaliates by giving me his card. Name’s Dan Daulby, of www.daulby.com fame, no doubt among many another place.

Somewhere in back of my mind I know the name so we get to talking. Turns out he’s a half-Ojibway graphic artist from Manitoba. (I’m a 1/16th Mi’kmaq from the Nova Scotia branch of the McPherson clan; hence the entry’s title.)

I ask him if he knows George Freeman, a Winnipeg-based pH-artist who worked on pH-5 with Verne Andrusiek (Verne Andru). Yep, they went to college together.

Seems over the years enterprising characters have scanned in various pages from the comic book series. These, I suppose, could be googled, though wouldn’t recommend it. A couple did contact Jim McPherson via www.phantacea.com, sought and got his permission to scan and mount not just a few pages but entire issues.

One hopes the lynx not only work but you take advantage of their availability. Once you’ve looked inside the book(s), you could, should you feel the urge, either provide your review(s) on amazon.com or else come back to this entry and add it (or them) to the comments below.

The jawless, spineless hagfish is a primitive creature that lives at the bottom of the ocean and dates back as far as 500 million years – but it exudes a very special slime, which could provide the clothing of the future.

,,, Scientists believe hagfish slime or similar proteins could be turned into tights or breathable athletic wear, or even bullet-proof vests.